


Unpack Your Heart

by Jacklight



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dorian the language nerd, Dragon Age Headcanons, Krem takes over this story, M/M, Romance, Slow Burn, Vignettes, daemon AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-16 17:45:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16499888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jacklight/pseuds/Jacklight
Summary: A series of semi-domestic vignettes exploring Dorian and Cullen's relationship when their souls walk beside them. IE: How these two idiots got together despite themselves.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Pavus](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/429848) by jadenwithwings. 

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dorian run from Redcliff into the arms of a handsome Templar.

The slave fumbles a tray of tea and toast on to the table and the scabs on her arms stand out red. The sleeveless shift she wears does nothing to hide her arms or keep her warm in the drafty southern castle. She doesn't speak a word. She curtsies once, a wobbling fold of ankles and knees that unseats the little squirrel on her shoulder. Dorian very nearly reaches out to steady her but she flinches before he can do more than shift his hand. He keeps his hands to himself.

Her fingers brush over the edge of the tray, pushes the plate of butter away from him. She scrambles away and out the door fast as a rat. In the hall, a clanking sound of armor sounds before the door slams shut. It locks with a distinctive and familiar sound.

It is not the first time that Dorian has been imprisoned in a gilded cage. His rooms at the Pavus Estate outside Qarinus was, perhaps, more elaborate of a cage than the one he finds himself in now, but the bars remain the same. Redcliff doesn't have the marble or velvet of the Pavus Estate but the Pavus Estate lacked the distict stench of blood magic.

Dorian turns back to the tray, eyes the plate of butter. He picks it up and sniffs, catches a there and gone again whiff of some bitter herb. He sets it down. Magebane has a distinctive if subtle scent, if one can catch it. He picks up the luke-warm tea instead. Out of habit he tries to snap a simple heat glyph into the side of his tea cup but his rings only catch the sunlight, not magelight. He sucks in a breath as he internally stumbles over the lack of response in his magic. It's rather like expecting another stair and finding nothing there.

The rest of his breakfast is simple, southern fare and for the first time in three days his tea is not laced with an herb designed to knock him unconscious. He sighs into the warm liquid, enjoying it despite himself, if just because it is the first time in days that he's had tea in his gullet.

"Do you not like butter?"

Dorian raises his eyes over the rim of his tea cup. His old mentor sits across from him, face inscrutable, eyes as restless as a frothing fox. They won't settle on any one thing for longer than a minute. A long-haired Tevinter Angora Cat in all-white fur sits at the man's elbow, staring at Dorian. Her eyes are golden and hazy with a madness Dorian can't identify, is terrified to. Her eyes are only slightly less crazed than her human's. Gereon cannot meet Dorian's eyes, but Dorian can't meet Melpromene's. She stares at him where Gereon cannot. Dorian's hand makes an aborted gesture towards his own shoulder where -

"I was sure you ate it yesterday."

Dorian frankly does not have the patience for the typical Tevinter political bullshit any more. Not from this man. Not from someone he once loved, still loves, if he were inclined not to bury the emotion under his rage.

"It would be more palatable without the magebane," Dorian says and Gereon sucks in a breath at his bluntness. "I'm disinclined to cooperate, you see, with none too subtle attempts at poisoning."

"Dorian," the man starts, his voice laced with disappointment. There was a time Dorian would have done anything to make that go away. Even now he closes his eyes against the desire to please this man.

"Where is Euphraxia?"

Gereon glances at the cat then to the locked door. It's his cat that speaks, her voice rasping in a way it never used to be. "Safe."

Dorian speaks to Gereon as if his daemon was not the one to answer him. "You'll excuse me if I doubt your word when you've been drugging me for the past eight days by use of tea and toast. Or, failing that, force."

"Safe, Dorian," Gereon repeats. "I would not -"

"Use a slave's blood to power spell research? Force theoretical time magic into a practical stage before your research is complete and you can guarantee safe results? Imprison your protege? Your son? Separate a man from his daemon? Tell me, Alexius, which one of these have you not done yet today?"

"Blood magic, Dorian? You know me better than that."

"Admittedly, I thought I did," Dorian puts his tea cup down onto the table with a clank, "it is curious that is the one action I name that you defend."

Gereon's frown is fanged with false disappointment, as if Dorian were some recalcitrant child throwing a tantrum over a magical theorem rather than discussing the list of Gereon's crimes. Once, that disappointment would have spurred Dorian into wilder thaumaturgical theories. Once, it would have made Dorian reach out to smooth it away.

"Where is Felix, Gereon? He hasn't visited me this week like you have. I'm beginning to fear he doesn't like me any more." Flippancy, Dorian thinks, ever his friend.

The man's frown deepens into an ugly mix of emotions Dorian can't identify. "You mock me, Dorian?"

"Mock you? Where is your son?"

"When the men here caught you in the Chantry," Gereon fingers the rim of the butter plate as if it was not laced with a potent drug, "I assumed they had caught some southern circle mage, or apostate come to steal my research."

"Which would not explain why I have been imprisoned in a bedchamber rather than the dungeons like - some southern apostate thief. Curious that."

"You doubt me?"

"Immensely," and that is an understatement. Dorian knows that Gereon has been aware of exactly who his men had caught sneaking about. Dorian had not been shy in telling all and sundry his name, and no guard southern or otherwise would forgo telling their master that they had caught a Tevinter Altus sneaking about. His daemon is rather a giveaway, after all, even if his name is not. Gereon has known since the beginning exactly who he has imprisoned in a Redcliff guest chamber.  
Dorian doubts that Gereon has cared.

Gereon breathes out more disappointment. Dorian ignores it even if his heart twists at the sound, still, despite everything.

"Time, Gereon, time," the cat says through it stares at Dorian.

"Yes," Gereon says and Melpromene slinks across the table towards Dorian. He actively ignores her, even when she brushes up under his chin in a once-familiar gesture. A slick chill races down his spine from the touch. She arches against him, a sound rumbling out of her throat that creeps into the animalistic and he feels sick.

"You've an experiment to attend?" Dorian's voice is tight through his nausea.

"Oh no. The experiments are almost ready. The magic is almost ready. In time. Time is important. But first," the man looks out the barred window and the craggy hills that stretch out from Redcliff. Melpromene jumps off the table. She doesn't look back, tail twitching as she makes for the door. "But first, Haven."

Gereon Alexius sweeps out of the room with his daemon. The sound of a muffled yell, terrified and resigned has Dorian's head snapping up. The woman Calpurnia holds the slave girl, limp and glassy eyed. Her little daemon is held bodily in the Calpurnia's fist, fighting weakly against the hold. The slave stares blindly into the room at Dorian but whimpers as Gereon edges into her vision. Dorian can see her trembling from across the room.

"Gereon!" Dorian rises - to do what, he has no idea - but his old mentor merely casts mad eyes towards him and slams the door closed in Dorian's face. He runs into the solid wood, pounds on the surface thrice. "Gereon!" Calpurnia moves away with a laugh that grates across Dorian's ears. The slave girl's whimpers fade.  
Gereon does not respond.

Dorian stares at the door under his fists, his heart breaking even as his mind races after the slave girl, to he little village down the hills, the magebane built up in his system and blocking all attempts at a spell, to his daemon who is close but missing - missing for days, like the months they spent apart in in the Pavus Estate. Euphraxia isn't far, their bond isn't stretched beyond a comfortable distance, but they haven't seen each other in over a week and Dorian's stress is fast rising into a sheer panic he can't control.

Outside in the courtyard a clamor rises. Dorian pulls away from the door and staggers across the room to peer through the windows. They're barred with iron and magic, obstructing his view in more ways than one. But in the courtyard there is the undeniable view of an amassing army of mages preparing to march.

Gereon emerges into the mass, the slave girl dragged along at his heels. She stumbles after him, drugged and listless, barely able to stand. The mages part around them. Their voices rise and fall like cresting waves, their staves waving in the air.  
Dorian watches the girl's blood spill under Gereon's blade.

Then he watches the mage Calpurnia spill Gereon's in turn. He doesn't blink or look away even as tears track down his face, falling as his mentor falls to power some spell for the preparation of war.

The roar of the army is deafening - or perhaps, he can no long stand to hear any more.

 

II.

Their bodies are still in the yard when Dorian crosses it after nightfall. His steps are measured, eyes on the shadows and body weary with his recent scuffle with a pair of guards. He's sill shedding the build up of magebane in his system from the past week and his magic is fluctuating in odd patterns. "Did you know her name?" Phrax asks, bending his beak to her forehead. His voice is rough, with disuse Dorian thinks.

"Elpis."

Phrax sighs out a breath over the girl's face. "Will you remember her?"

"She warned me about the magebane in the breakfast butter."

"So, yes, then."

Dorian nods and kneels next to the girl. He brushes his fingers over his daemon's head, down his long neck to the solid body and fan of feathers under his wings. Phrax pushes up into his touch. They are both starved for it, having been kept apart for so long.

"Euphraxia," Dorian whispers and refrains from digging his fingers into his daemon's feathers or scooping him into his arms. He's afraid if he starts they won't stop and he won't get anything done.

"Gereon should have made sure you ate it," Phrax pointedly does not look at Gereon's body a few yards away. "The magebane."

Dorian hums his agreement. Without his magic he would not have escaped the warded room or found Phrax caged across the hall. If he had been dosed with the magebane as he was supposed to have been, Dorian would not have escaped at all. He looks at Gereon's body, wonders if the man was so far gone as to have forgotten Dorian's skills or if he left the opening for escape on purpose.

Dorian can't help but hope, has to hope or else go mad with the betrayal - he sighs and picks up the girl's body to move it next to Gereon's.

Phrax doesn't question or comment. He understands, probably better than Dorian, about the need for hope. Euphraxia has always carried their greatest hopes. He only follows and asks, "fire?"

"Yes," Dorian kneels at their heads, rests one palm over her collarbone and the other atop Gereon's heart. The fire flares red-hot under his hands and seeps into their chests like molten rock. Phrax moves away as they are consumed, even as Dorian keeps his hands in place, controlling the fire and feeding it hotter. Phrax whispers Andraste's prayer until the fire dies.  
In the end only ashes and bones are left, ruffled by the wind. Dorian sighs and sifts through the warm remains. From the ashes he plucks out two small bones, one from each of their fingers.

"Elpis," Phrax whispers, "and Gereon Alexius."

Dorian doesn't say anything and slips the bones into a pocket for later.

"How much time has it been?"

"Four hours," Dorian says and eyes the gates leading out of Redcliff castle. They've been left open, not even guarded. He isn't sure if its because Calpurnia is mad or overconfident. She and the so-called Elder One have an army of mages. They have quite the head start, but they'll be moving slowly over the mountain, hindered by the bulk of their force, the mountain, and the darkness. A lone runner could -

"Felix is still missing," Phrax counters Dorian's line of thought.

Dorian sucks in a breath and uses the simple yew staff to push himself to his feet. "There are hundreds in Haven."  
Phrax leaps into the air in a rush of jeweled feathers. His long train rustles in the air and then settles around Dorian's legs as the peacock lands atop his covered shoulder. Phrax's talons dig into his leathers, his weight a relief and comfort. The courtyard around them is quiet and dark. The few Venatori left in the keep killed as Dorian escaped and routed the castle grounds in his furious search for Felix. The night sky is lit by a full moon and a scattering of clouds that reflect white against the stars. The darkness of the night will slow the army's march over the narrow road between Redcliff and Haven.

"We've spent too long searching," Dorian whispers, hating himself for saying it. "We better get started," Dorian says even as he stares back at the keep. Felix could still be inside, hidden away in some prison or hiding in a hole. Or he may not be at Redcliff castle at all. Or - but Dorian doesn't think of the alternative. Phrax's weight is familiar on his shoulder and he thinks of hope.

"We'll barely have time to outrace them," Phrax tightens his hold on Dorian's leathers. "We'll be lucky to reach Haven ahead of them even now."

"Maker make clear our path, then," Dorian turns away from the castle and jogs out of the courtyard.

 

III.

Calpurnia's scouts catch sight of him five miles outside of Haven. Dorian's steady jog turns into a dangerous sprint down the rocky mountain. Phrax flits from tree to rock to shoulder, unable to fly for long but unwilling to hinder Dorian's run. The full moon is the only thing lighting the narrow road and desperation is the only thing keeping Dorian on his feet.  
Fire flares over his shoulder, collides with a tree that explodes in his face.

"Kaffas," he hisses, ducking under the splinters and skidding down meters of loose stone and gravel. He nearly loses his staff, holds on to it by sheer force of will. His momentum is stopped by another tree, which he collides straight into with enough force to leave him gasping for breath around screaming ribs. Phrax wings over his head, long tail whipping through Dorian's hair. His daemon lands on a rock and looks back at him. Dorian twists around, reaches desperately for the fade, and lashes a lightning bolt up the road that has the scouts scrambling for cover.

"Just go," Dorian scrambles to his feet, ducks another fireball, and lets gravity pull him faster down the mountain. Phrax flies ahead of him, his flight distances aided by their downward slope and the speed with which Dorian is descending the mountain.

"The magebane?"

"It is - hah - does take time to," Dorian skids around a turn of the road and huffs in relief as a rise of rock is put between him and his pursuers. "Takes time to leave one's system," he says, laying a glyph of frost across the road before sprinting off again.

"How bad is it?"

"Rather like swimming through molassas," Dorian grunts and grins as a yell behind him is cut off in a squeal of clashing ice. Phrax doesn't ask again. Likely, his daemon can feel some of the effects the drug still has on Dorian. Connecting to the fade for spells is hindered by the remnants of the drug that's been in his system for nearly a week. What little bit of leeway and mana he has from the missed dosage that morning is quickly consumed by weak spells.

"Less talking," Dorian huffs, "more running."

It's a miracle that they make Haven at all, Dorian thinks. Three of the original six scouts on his tail are still there as he approaches the village's closed gates. Dorian slows in front of the obstacle and the mages behind him circle around like hyenas stalking a kill. He's heaving, desperately dragging in air to breathe and ignoring the swath of injuries he incurred during his mad dash down the side of a bloody mountain. Phrax drops out of the sky to the ground at his side, feathers half-raised in display to make him look bigger than he is. The three mage's daemons are all birds, small little things that stick to their human's shoulders.

"Well you are a persistent lot, I'll give you that."

They don't respond to his taunt so Dorian shrugs, spins his staff in a slow pinwheel at his side.

They swoop in like vultures and fire explodes out of Dorian's staff. It spirals out in a wave, collides with the scouts one by one in a blast of heat. The force of the spell sends them all to the ground, blows over a wagon, and rattles the thick wooden gates of the village.

Dorian drops to a knee, winded and gasping in the aftermath. His hands tremble and his body feels overheated. The weak little yew staff is charred a full third of its length. Too much fire and magic pushed through a focus too weak to handle the force. Dorian is lucky the thing didn't splinter into his hands.

"Dorian?"

"Too much is all," he whispers, settling his daemon's concern. Then, because he isn't sure he can stand without falling right over into the dirt, he yells at the gates, "If someone could open this, I'd appreciate it!"

A woman pushes through first, dark haired and petite in pale leathers and gleaming armor. Over it all she wears a standard Chantry tabard – trained Templar or cleric who picked up an ax? She whispers an awed, "Maker's breath," as she eyes the trio of charred Venatori. One of them is still simmering like a coal, spell-fire crackling merrily over the man's spell-protected robes.

Dorian plants his staff into the dirt and watches as she's followed by an armored blonde with sword drawn. A pair of great cats and a handful of soldiers spill out after them - Templars all - and Dorian wonders if he's run from one precarious situation into the proverbial fire. But the man sheathes his sword and Dorian's never let himself be ruled entirely by cowardice.

"Ah, I'm here to warn you," he says as he pushes shakily to his feet, "fashionably late I'm afraid." Dizziness sweeps over him and he tilts straight into the soldier.

There is entirely too much to do what with an attacking army for Dorian to be distracted by a handsome man in armor. Still, Dorian takes note of the man's blue-eyed lioness as he gives his warning, and the quick call to action the man yells out to his soldiers.

As the Herald dashes off into the village to meet the Venatori, Dorian limps through Haven's gates, exhausted beyond measure.

"He's handsome," Phrax says into his ear and Dorian chuckles out a weak laugh. "Pretty cat, too."

"That cat," Dorian says, amused, "is liable to swallow you whole."

"You'd like that if he did it to you."

"Hah!" Dorian barks out, ignoring the glances sent his way for their whispered conversation. "Quite," he admits and glances back through the closing gates. A flash of red and fur next to a golden feline: Cullen's sword whips through his opponent with an economy of action that is nearly breathtaking. "Quite, indeed," and Dorian is shut into the village.

.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dorian makes a friend and catches a certain someone's attention.

Dorian holes up in the Chantry to breathe and poke at his ribs while the battle rages outside. He eyes the door, and his charred staff, but he hasn't the energy left for even a simple fireball let alone a battle. If the fledgling Inquisition has a store of Lyrium potions, nobody has bothered to extend one to the exhausted harbinger of their doom. He knows he's better served conserving his strength for now.

Still, his fingers work over the bones from his pocket, carving their edges and shaping them with soft applications of magic, fire and force, until the little finger bones are whittled and folded into smooth spheres of ivory. He stares at his hands as he works. He doesn't see his hands or the bones, but rather the slave girl's face, and Gereon's madness, and the sick feel of Melpromene's touch against his skin. Once, not so very long ago, Dorian welcomed her touch. Once, it was a warm comfort.

"Elpis and Gereon," Phrax says into his ear.

Dorian nods, caught up in memory and grief.

"You risked your life to warn Haven," a Chantry man says as he sits on the bench next to him. His daemon is a tabby cat at his side and for a second, Dorian sees Melpromene's wild yellow eyes in the tabby's face and he looks away.

"Ah, yes," Dorian says and tries to pull himself out of memory to address the man.

"I'm Chancellor Roderick," the Chantry man says, then waves at his daemon, "this is Rosalba."

"Oh, er, Dorian of House Pavus, how do you do?" He says by rote, distracted by the introduction of the man's daemon. It is such a strange southern practice, this exchange of the names of one's soul. Then he winces as a rattling boom from the battle outside shakes the Chantry windows. "I don't think you need to answer that," Dorian amends. "I rather suspect I know how you do at the moment, considering."

Roderick's mouth twitches into a half-smile and he nods at the bones in Dorian's hands. They don't look like finger bones any more, merely ivory beads.

"I'm familiar with this practice," he says, making Dorian freeze. "Oh, not to worry. I'm Nevarran, originally. I do not fear the Mortalitasi or their ways. I have an uncle amongst them."

"Whose to say I am Mortalitasi?" Roderick raises his brows and Dorian rolls his shoulders into a shrug. "Oh, fine. Yes. It doesn't bother you? A mage of the dead running about your Chantry, whittling bones into beads, and with magic no less?"

"Whose deaths do you remember with them?"

Dorian sucks in a sharp breath.

"I know the practice," Roderick says and his voice is soft, accepting. His eyes drop to the ivory beads. "I can imagine your flight from Redcliff did not come without cost."

"No, it didn't."

"I will pray for them, if I may?"

Dorian nods, stunned into silence by this man's easy acceptance of an observance that is usually condemned, even in most of Tevinter. He fingers the two beads, "Elpis and Gereon." Roderick nods and bows his head right there next to Dorian. He prays silently, barely more than a whisper of words at Dorian's shoulder. Dorian watches the man's bent head for a long minute before he digs the waxed string out of his right vambrace where it lives tucked safely into his leathers and armor. Three ivory beads already decorate the tasseled string. As the Chantry man prays, Dorian loosens the knots on the string and feeds it through the two new beads of bone. They clack against the others, adding to his list of the dead whose memories he will always carry.

He fingers each silently, sensing the shape of the people the bones came from, reciting names in his head: Leto, Rilienus Sarius, nonna Beata, Elpis, Gereon Alexius. Too many names, he thinks, too many - his fingers scrabble down the empty stretch of string as if expecting another bead.

Felix is still missing. Euphraxia's weight reminds him of that hope even as he counts the beads again, mind settling into a quiet sort of restlessness under Roderick's prayers.

Roderick finishes his prayer as Dorian is reworking the complex knots of the string. The beads weigh heavy on the waxed cord and the string's long tassels tangle around Dorian's knuckles as he works. The Chantry man rests his hand over Dorian's armored vambrace, his touch light and more of a comfort than Dorian ever expected. Before the man can continue their conversation, a group of Venatori burst into the Chantry from some side room, their boots and staves clattering across the stone floor.

Dorian sweeps out of his seat around Roderick and swipes his staff butt straight up into one of their chins.

  
II.

Their flight from Haven is hindered by the narrow trail and the mix of desperate villagers, wounded soldiers, and the heavy fear of those fleeing a lost battle. That the Herald remains behind to cover their retreat is a further burden. Dorian can't help but glance back periodically as they climb. Most of Haven is lost behind the rise of a foothill, but the sound of the dragon can still be heard.

Roderick is heavy against Dorian, his steps faltering more as they go up the mountain into deeper snows. The man is warm - too warm - against Dorian's side and it's almost enough to ward off the chill of winter but his concern for the man's wounds drowns out most comfort from the warmth.

He's afraid half the heat is from blood spilling over the poultice onto his leathers.  
Phrax sits on Dorian's shoulder, his rump brushing against Roderick's covered arm, but there is little other choice in this. The Chantry man barely has the strength to walk let alone be bothered by the brush of another's daemon through the barrier of cloth. Roderick's daemon, Rosalba, is playing a rather effective fur collar around her human's neck, eyes narrowed in exhaustion.

"If you bleed out in the snow after I dragged you all this way," Dorian tells the man, not really expecting him to be listening through his labored breathing, "I shall be very cross. Also, you shall owe me new boots, I think. Blood is ever so hard to work out of fine leather."

"Boots and my thanks," Roderick whispers.

Dorian falters in surprise. "Ah, you are still alive, my man. Good."  
Roderick breathes out a rough affirmative and stumbles against him, suddenly heavy. Dorian grunts under his weight and drops to a knee in the snow. "Fasta vass," he hisses as Phrax flutters off his shoulder. "For such a skinny man you weigh an awful lot."

Dorian manhandles the other until Roderick is leaned over his back, piggy-back style. With his staff slipped under the man's thighs for support, Dorian pushes to his feet.

"Perhaps you should forego the post-service luncheons from now on," Dorian gripes. "Or switch to a less Feraldan inspired diet. All those breads and thick butters and rich cheeses."

"I'm not fat."

Dorian barks out a breathy laugh, delighted at the man's retaliation despite it all. "Good man," he says, then softer, “do not die, if you would. I’d rather not add your name to the list I already carry.”

“Mine would not be one for your shoulders.”

Dorian huffs, “you stood between a Venatori and I. I shall feel terribly responsible if you die from that little slash on your side, ser.”

The Chancellor chuckles, but then groans and falls silent. Dorian doesn’t prompt him back into a conversation. He can feel the man’s breathing against his back and knows he lives. Roderick needs his energy to live, and Dorian needs his own to carry them both up the mountain.

The snow seems a lot thicker and heavier with the added weight on his back, but Dorian gamely hikes up the narrow trail after the refugees. Phrax deals with the snow only marginally better. His legs are long enough for him to stalk through the drifts, but his tail offers a logistical challenge. He settles on leading the way along the packed down snows from those who went before.

As a result, they don't make the best time. They aren't the only ones, though.

When the thundering cracks of an avalanche sounds behind, Dorian pauses, hands on a boulder and bent half over under the Chancellor’s weight, and looks back. A plume of white rises off the side of the mountain over Haven, sliding down the slope like a heavy fog falling in. The turn in the trail and the height gives Dorian a fair view of the village as it’s swallowed. The noise thunders up the mountain long after Haven is buried.

“Maker be with them,” the Commander’s voice says from above, “and Andraste preserve her Herald.”

The blonde Commander is just up the trail from Dorian’s position. He stares down at the buried village, the picture of the hero. His red cloak flutters, he has one foot canted up the trail, his lioness daemon curls proudly around his legs, and his hand rests on the pommel of his sword – it’s all very gallant.

“Fereldan is such a charming country,” Dorian gripes because he doesn’t have the energy for any other kind of repartee, “it’s all snow and mud, dogs and dragons.”

The Commander stares at him as if just now seeing him. “Are you – is he alright?”

“He faced down a Venatori,” Dorian says, “brave man.”

The Chancellor’s hand waves from its limp hang in front of Dorian’s sternum, a sort of assurance of his continued living. It seems to settle the Commander, somewhat. The blonde eyes them, starts twice as if about to move to – help or perhaps take the Chantry man from Dorian’s back – but instead he nods and looks back up the trail.

“We’ll make camp soon,” the Commander says and is polite enough not to ask if Dorian needs help carrying the other man. It’s a lovely boost to his pride if nothing else. “Just over the rise. Cassandra is already directing the setup of the encampment there.”

“Ah,” Dorian breathes, “from one quaint little southern village into a tent in the snow.”

“Be glad for the tent,” the Commander says and Dorian notes the lack of derogative or label he throws. Most everyone Dorian has interacted with these last hours as Haven fought and fled has called him The Vint, Magister, or Mage as if it were an insult. The Commander forgoes all of them. It is a politer address than Dorian has experienced since he ran into Haven.

“Well,” Dorian says, “so long as it keeps the snow off me I suppose I shall live, but I do not guarantee a cessation of complaints unless there is a bed involved.”

The Commander chuckles, quick and quiet. Then, as if embarrassed or disappointed, the man grimaces down at the buried village, turns, and trudges up the trail. His lion lingers, silent and staring with the bluest eyes Dorian has ever seen. She pads after her human without saying a word. Dorian is left quite alone in the snow.

“I still like him,” Phrax says.

“You don’t even know him,” Dorian scoffs, shifts Roderick’s weight over his back, and slogs after the leonine Commander.

  
III.

Euphraxia’s long train of feathers serves as a jeweled backdrop for the Chancellor’s rest bed. The healing tent is a conglomeration of canvas construction, holding far too many against not enough healers. The peacock perches in the poles over Roderick’s pallet, long tail hanging over his head like a curtain. Dorian sits next to the man, legs crossed as he knots red twine around the charred ends of his staff. Charred with over-use, and starting to crack at the ends, the weak yew staff is Dorian’s primary weapon, for all the good it offers him.

Across the tent, the Commander kneels over one of his injured soldiers. The lad is young, nearly bisected by some sort of claw. Dorian’s heard the healers muttering. The lad will unlikely see the dawn. So, the Commander sits with the boy, hand on his shoulder, and voice pitched low and soothing.

The man’s daemon sit’s silently at the foot of the boy’s pallet, eyes on the dying soldier like some sort of waiting psychopomp.

Roderick’s hand on his knee startles him out of his staring.

“Ah, Chancellor,” Dorian offers a real smile, relieved to see the man conscious, “welcome to the land of the living. However, for as much as I enjoy seeing you awake, I suggest you go back to sleep. There is nothing here to see except the dreary expanse of the Frostbacks and a host of drab refugees wandering through the snow. Your dreams may serve far better entertainment.”

The man chuckles silently and squeezes his fingers around Dorian’s leather-clad knee.

“Do you have need of anything?” Dorian asks with less pomp.

“Water?”

“Ah, yes,” Dorian provides a water skin, helps the man drink, and settle back against the thin pallet and straw-stuffed grain bag serving as a pillow. Roderick’s little tabby curls idly in the crook of his shoulder and neck, eyes tired and watchful. Dorian tucks the lone wool blanket around the man’s shoulders and tries not to look like he’s fussing.

“The Herald?”

“She emerged from the snows the night before last, hand a-glowing into the arms of her people. She makes a lovely show of being Andraste’s chosen, right down to the Chantry cloth clinging to her leathers,” Dorian says, then drops the drama again, “she is well. She is leading us into the frozen heart of these abominable mountains to some heretofore unknown and promised destination, but she is well enough physically. I cannot say much for her mind, considering our direction, but, ah, well.”

“Thank the Maker.”

“And thank the caverns under these mountains,” Dorian says, “for providing an underground trail for her escape. Perhaps they were the Maker’s doing as well.”

The man nods, seemingly pleased, “good, good. I wish to speak with her, to, to tell her.”

Dorian hushes him and settles his hand heavily over the man’s shoulder. “You’ll have the time, my man,” he says. “For all your attempts to die for the cause, the healers tell me that you will live.”

“Will I?”

“No need to sound so surprised! I was hardly going to allow you to pass after I carried you up a mountain.” Dorian eyes him down the long length of his nose, all dramatic flair and nobility, “you owe me a new pair of boots, you’ll recall. I shall collect.”

Roderick laughs, grimaces and continues to chuckle even as Dorian pushes him back down to the pallet with recriminations and warnings against aggravating half-healed wounds shabbily done by half-trained southern healers.

“Good, good,” the man says, quiet and still again. “I owe her my apologies. I doubted, but no more.”

“A convert to the cause of the Herald, are you?”

“I see it now.”

“Anything in particular?”

“She is Andraste’s Herald,” Roderick says. “I don’t doubt that now.”

“I suppose only one so marked could face down a corrupted dragon, a mountain of snow, and still find her way out of it all.”

“More than that,” the man says and pats Dorian’s knee. “You shall see, too, in time.”

Dorian hums, “perhaps so. Rest, my good man, you will live but as I said, it’s a bleak view outside this tent. If I could sleep away this trudge through snow and ice to destinations unknown I would do so as well.”  
Roderick does sleep, his body too exhausted from healing and rough travel to stay awake. Dorian watches him as he slips under. Rosalba follows after giving Dorian a long slow blink.

“You saved his life,” the Commander says from behind Dorian’s shoulder. He tenses at the sudden closeness of the man. The blonde stares down at the Chancellor, only peripherally aware of Dorian’s surprise. Behind the man, the young soldier is covered with a blanket, still and hidden and gone. “By carrying him out of Haven.”

“I’m sure the man would have managed,” Dorian deflects, “he has his own strengths.”

“No, the healers told me of his wounds,” but the Commander doesn’t detail how Roderick would have keeled over in the snow on his own, or likely would have bled out if Dorian hadn’t bandaged him tightly enough as they fled the Chantry. Dorian may not be a healer, but he's familiar enough with triage to know how much his aid helped the Chancellor live.

The Commander watches the Chantry man sleep for a while, then his eyes drag up the long train of Euphraxia’s tail to his perch above their heads. He doesn’t mention anything about Dorian’s daemon either, which from Dorian’s experience of southerners is unusual. He’s never been introduced to so many daemons by name than when he traveled south. But the Commander does not introduce the lion sitting at his side, either. Her eyes glow blue as they watch Dorian – not the Chancellor or Dorian’s daemon, but Dorian himself.

A clamor outside the healing tent, and a helmeted head sticks itself inside. “Commander!”

Dorian watches the man go. The lion nods at Dorian before padding after her human on silent feet.

“Well,” Dorian breathes, “southerners are a strange bunch.”

“Handsome, too,” Phrax says soft enough that only Dorian and Roderick – if he was even awake – would hear.

"Do try to focus on the dire situation instead of the pleasing looks of the Inquisition’s Commander, Phrax.”

“You’re focused enough on the dire for the both of us.”

“Because someone can’t keep their head out of the gutter,” Dorian hisses at his daemon. Phrax just laughs at him, a low rolling sound that settles half the worry and unease in Dorian’s gut. It’s been too long since he’s heard his daemon laugh. It’s been too long since he’s heard his own laugh.

“I like her eyes,” Phrax says, apropos of nothing.

Dorian rather likes the eyes of the Commander pair, too; one golden and one glowing blue like a Lyrium potion.

.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cullen stumbles across Dorian somewhere he doesn't expect.

He stands in the snow, pulling in the cold air to chase away the cloying scent of elfroot poultices, and the dying breaths of a too-young recruit. Cullen is alone in the space between the healing tent at his back and the funerary tent set up in its shadow where it can't be seen from the bulk of the encampment..

He's between the dying and the dead, with nothing but the snow for company.

The air is cold, crisp enough to dry his nostrils and make his breath visible. He fills his lungs with it, stares up at the mountain rising high over his head, craggy and dusted with snow. Beyond the high ridge the sun is setting.

For a few cold minutes his mind lets go of the dying in the tent behind him, of the dead in the tent before him, and of the masses of dead buried under Haven. He sees the ridge lined in gold, snow billowing in the wind from the peaks to fall under a clear sky. The pounding in his head subsides, dulled in the face of the cold sky.

His Hildi slinks pale as a sunbeam out of the healing tent and rubs her long length along his thigh. He kneels. She pushes her head up under his chin and for a moment he thinks she whispers his name.

"I do miss your voice," he whispers.

His head throbs, but evens into something tolerable as Hildi's warm bulk presses into him.

A familiar voice floats out of the funerary tent.

One of the tent's flaps has been left untied and it wavers in the breeze coming down the slopes. Dull light filters out of the tent along with the occasional murmur of voices, hushed in the face of the death filling that tent. Cullen runs a hand over Hildi's head as he stands, letting his fingers trail off an ear. He pushes the flap aside to peer within, half afraid of how full of the dead it will be. Old oil lamps swing from the tent poles overhead, their flames dull and heavy against the canvas walls. Rows of palettes line the tent. Too many have died in Haven, but too many have died in the days following as they race darkspawn and the dead into the mountains.

The undertaker has two apprentices, both whip thin and sallow-faced. One looks on the cusp of manhood, the other barely twelve. The kid is helping the Tevinter mage, Dorian, as he washes a body of grime and blood. This is not the place Cullen would have expected to find the mage. Dorian had spent the first few days of their flight up the mountains at the Chancellor Roderick’s side whether walking next to the wagon reserved for the injured, or sitting next to the man in the healing tents. He suffered the healer’s distrust and mutterings without a single glance or indication that he even heard their insults.  
But bent over the dead he is. Behind the mage, a full row of bodies lay swaddled in linen, ready for the pyres.

The mage's great colorful bird daemon is not to be seen. Cullen sweeps the tent, tallies the four living souls and three daemons - two small mammals, one old mangy dog - but no jeweled bird to decorate Dorian's shoulder. It's not unusual, but so very rare for a circle mage to let their daemon out of sight. Perhaps Tevinter is different, more apt to stretch their bonds.  
Perhaps Tevinter mages are different from all rumor, if this one is any indication.

The Tevinter himself is stripped of his over robes and armor, down to his leather chausses and velvet breeches underneath. He isn't wearing a shirt. Despite the chill of the winter breeze filtering through the open flap, Dorian's skin is wet, either with sweat or remnants of the oil and water he is using to wash the corpses. It highlights bruising that decorates his arms and the bloom of dark color over his ribs.

The wounds do not seem to hinder his movements as his hands work with careful precision over the body, sponge scraping away old blood and less savory bodily fluids from a gut wound. The smell off the body must be horrendous, but the mage has nothing but a concentrated frown on his face. He does not flinch, or turn away, or look with disgust upon the dead.

Cullen has seen few men able to do the same.

"Thread, please," Dorian says in a quiet voice, one long-fingered hand held out in waiting. The boy already has it prepared. The mage bends over the corpse to stitch its belly back together. The boy continues washing down the body as the mage puts it back into one piece. Their movements are easy, familiar, and Cullen looks again at the long row of dead behind Dorian's back, each one swaddled by their hands.

There is only a handful of bodies waiting for their attentions, but Cullen knows there will be more before the night is through. There are too many in the healing tents who won’t make it.

Cullen turns his head out into the cold air, breathes in full lungs of cold to wash the smell of death and funerary oils out of his nostrils. He tries to breathe out the memories of the dying in the healing tent. They linger like the pounding in his head and the thirst that won't go away. His fingers find Hildi's fur and grips at the ruff of her neck. She pushes back, all the comfort she can really offer and usually enough. 

"Commander," Dorian's voice floats over to him. He turns and the mage is staring at him, silver eyes catching the lamp light and flashing like a blade, not sharp, just glinting. Cullen had been avoiding looking at the dead's face, but now he can't help it. His eyes sweep up the body to the face, takes in the too-young features, not familiar to him but that only eases the ache in him a margin. The boy could have been a recruit, they always look younger in sleep or death than they do in life. Or he could have been the baker's son in Haven. Cullen doesn't know.

"Commander Rutherford?"

"My apologies, Master Pavus," Cullen starts.

"Oh no, Master Pavus is my father and I've hardly his level of propriety, much to his disappointment," the mage interrupts, "please, call me Dorian."

"Yes, Ser Dorian," Cullen ignores the man's put-upon sigh, "please excuse me. I did not expect you here."

"Here in your camp of refugees fleeing from my ill-begotten countrymen," Dorian says as he gives half his attention back to his task. He finishes his stitching with a knot and cuts the thread. "Or here somewhere helping instead of starting something nefarious amongst your exhausted soldiers. Perhaps poison in the grain supply, or a bit of blood magic behind the latrines where the smell of blood will be disguised under the stench of refuse."

It isn't really a question. Dorian seems too tired to put the full weight of his cynicism into his words. They fall short of being snapping and end up sounding resigned, as if he is well used to suspicions aimed at him. Cullen amends his earlier thoughts. Dorian likely has heard a great deal of the muttering against him in the last few days. Cullen wonders, suddenly, if the man has even had any chance to rest after his mad run through the night to warn them about the attacking Venatori. It's been days since Haven fell under snow and rocks and the mage carried the Chancellor up a mountain on his back, but they have been hard days in the mountains. No one has rested well except the dead.

"I meant here in the funerary tent," because seeing a Tevinter noble half stripped bare with his hands oiled in incense as he washes the dead is the very last thing Cullen expected.

"Ah." Dorian sets the needle aside and watches the boy finish washing the dead man's legs and feet. A whisper of a voice floats around them. The boy's daemon sits silent and still at the back of his neck, half hidden by hair. Cullen can see only that it is some sort of rodent or small mammal. The whisper again, and the boy glances up at the mage, then higher, before dropping his gaze to the body's feet he is cleaning.

Cullen raises his eyes to the poles crossing the space overhead, past the glim of the oil lamps into the shadows above. Perched on a pole directly over Dorian's head is his daemon. The bird looks both bigger and smaller in the gimlet shadows. Most of its color is shrouded, but its head and body are clear silhouettes against the canvas. Stretched out somewhere in the shadows, the bird's tail rests across beams and poles like a spreading fan.

"Well," the mage cants his head to the side and looks at Cullen from a guarded angle, "I am Mortalitasi. I am a modest somatic healer, as such, but this," he gestures at the body laid out before him, "this I can do and it is the least I can do."  
"Forgive me. I did not mean to offend."

Dorian blinks and unfolds his neck to look at Cullen straight on, "no, I suppose you didn't. You are not bothered by the presence of a Necromancer, Commander?"

"Um, no. Well," Cullen stops and aborts the movement of his hand towards his neck. 

“Not even a Necromancer from Tevinter? Or is it that I am a mage?”

“What difference is there?” A mage is a mage with equal chances of abomination in Cullen's experience.

“Ah, hah. What difference indeed? I did not learn my specialty in one of your Templar guarded circles, that is a difference. Do – or shall I say did, considering recent rebellious events – did your circles even train in such a specialization of magic? I’ve always been of the impression that the south thought little of Necromancers, or less of them.”

“It’s rare. Where did you learn?”

“Between the Circle of Minrathous and the Mortalitasi in Nevarra City’s Necropolis. Only the best tutors for the son of a Magister, of course.”

“Of course,” Cullen eyes the line of the dead, swaddled in linen.

"Ser," the boy says into the silence, and Dorian visibly shakes himself. The boy holds out a funerary linen like a reminder and the mage nods.

"Yes, yes," Dorian slips his hands under the body and lifts it off the palette. The strain bulges the muscles of his arms all the way into his jaw. Despite the obvious weight, he lifts the dead without jostling the body, his weight braced on his knees as his core and arms do most of his work. It's a testament to the man's physical strength. A body is heavy, a dead one more so.  
The boy slides the linen under, straightens it and gives the go ahead. Dorian lowers the body with care. He stretches the legs out and folds the lad's hands over his chest. He holds the hands there with one of his own and runs the other through the dead's hair, styling it with a murmur of praise. He dips two fingers in a pot of waiting oil, the scent strong enough to drift all the way to Cullen in the door – earthy and rich, pungent; Hildi sneezes behind his thigh – and draws a line across the dead’s brow. Dorian presses his oiled fingers to the lad’s closed eyes, painting oil there. He kisses his lips and draws the last of the oil over the lad’s mouth and over his chin in a soft caress. It’s a pattern of funerary rites that Cullen is only faintly familiar with. Nevarran. Not Orlesian and certainly not Feraldan or Marches. 

The kiss gives it away. Only in Nevarra, he thinks, is a kiss used to seal the body from possession. It is little more than a superstitious gesture but Cullen sees the respect in the move and says nothing. Dorian doesn't hesitate in the action and kisses the dead without reserve. He goes through the Nevarran rites with an ease born of long practice.

Throughout all his motions, Dorian’s voice whispers over his lips, a breath of sound without words. Cullen recognizes the cadence if not the language – Tevene likely, or Nevarran perhaps – as Andraste’s prayer. The words in Trade filter through Cullen’s head in time to the rhythm set by the mage’s breathing and soft whispers. As it concludes, he breathes out the final lines with Dorian, “for You are the fire at the heart of the world, and comfort is only Yours to give.”

Dorian’s head snaps up, his expression inscrutable. In response, Cullen just touches his finger tips to his chest plate over his heart, a simple gesture of respect – whether for the dead or for the man caring for the dead, even Cullen is unsure. 

In the end, the body is swaddled as neatly as the rest and there is a line of linen-wrapped dead awaiting the morning funeral pyres. They will leave the pyres burning as the encampment moves deeper into the mountains. There will be no time or men to tend them. Cullen turns, faces out into the snow and watches the fall of snow off the high ridge overhead. Likely, the coming winter snows will bury the pyres, ashes and all within a few weeks. These swaddled dead will join those in Haven buried under snow. At least these had been seen to.

Dorian exchanges a few words with the undertaker before moving towards where Cullen stands in the entrance to the tent. He hasn't moved since his arrival, caught somewhere between the cold snow with Hildi at his back and the suffocating warmth of the funerary oils. Cullen has been entranced by Dorian's careful hands as he cared for the dead of a people that are not his own. The man’s daemon flies down from the poles, a flutter of resplendent feathers that draws the eye.

"Commander," Dorian says as he nears. He raises his arms in a gesture and the oils coating his skin shimmer in the lamp light. "If you would be so kind, ser."

It takes Cullen entirely too long to deduce his meaning. "Oh, yes, of course," he says, pushing the tent flap aside to make room for the man to exit, his peacock daemon on his heels. Hildi slips to the side, eyes glowing blue in the half-light, and Cullen follows him out into the snow. A single brazier hangs from the tent’s apex pole, lighting the snow and a barrel of chilled water to the side. A thin film of ice layers its surface. A bundle of linens waits for the dying, and what looks to be Dorian's clothes and armor wait on a rack along with towels and his charred staff.

Dorian plunges his arms into the barrel all the way to his shoulders, and hisses at the cold. He scrubs his hands down their lengths, heedless of his bruises, washing off oil and the refuse of the dead he's spent hours washing. Arms scrubbed, he splashes at his chin, chest, and belly, scrapes off the oil there and picks through the dark hair that decorates his sternum and trails all the way down to his belt. Two gold rings decorate his nipples and they catch the light as much as they catch Cullen’s breath. Cullen averts his eyes from the allure, inspects the bruising again. The wound around the man's ribs is ragged, made from some wide-surfaced weapon - a hammer or block of wood - and his skin is a riot of shades. They are older bruises, edging into the flurry of greens and yellows that signal healing but blue is still present at the heart of them.

"Have you seen a healer?”

“Some days ago, yes,” Dorian eyes him, then twists to poke at his own ribs, “I’ve a poultice to speed the process, but it will heal well enough without. The young healer was kind enough to set the fractured bones of my ribs. Are you concerned for me, Commander? My, what would your men think, wasting your efforts on a Tevinter mage. Tut.”

“It’s hardly a waste,” Cullen frowns at the man's words and the extent of his injuries. His ribs may have been healed, but no doubt they are still quite painful to the mage. Cullen only hopes the man had found a healer before he carried another man up the entire mountain with cracked ribs. “Your warning gave us what time we had to prepare a defense.”

“Little good it did. There was hardly any time to prepare anything, I’m afraid. Quite the harbinger of doom I became, with an army of rebel mages on my heels in the night.”

Cullen reaches out, stills Dorian’s movements with a hand on the man’s unbruised elbow. Dorian tenses, his face guarded into neutrality but his eyes reflecting a wariness that puts Cullen in mind of the mages in the Gallows of Kirkwall. “I know the paths between Haven and Redcliff,” Cullen says, “It is no easy road to navigate, especially in the dark, and especially with a hostile force chasing you. Any warning of attack is welcomed, no matter how little time is given. Thank you.”

“Appreciation is always welcome, but your thanks are certainly unnecessary. What else was I to do?”

“Join your countrymen in their attack?” Cullen counters with a twist of his lips, “Fulfill the biases towards Tevinters as bloodmages? Run and save your own hide instead of putting yourself between an attacking army and a town full of civilians and ragtag soldiers whose only hope for escape was an avalanche?”

“Well,” Dorian breathes, works his jaw, and then brushes his fingers across Cullen’s hand on his arm. They’re very warm, despite the icy water the mage had used to wash. It still clings to his skin, dripping and no doubt freezing the man under the fall of wind and snow off the mountain. “I hardly, you – “

Cullen huffs and pulls his hand back, “just say you’re welcome, Dorian.”

Dorian laughs, a soft but real sound that pulls out of his chest. He dips back into a formal bow, one hand over his heart and the other behind his back with his feet pulled into a tangle that looks precarious. “You are most welcome, my Commander,” he says with a grin as real as his laugh.

Cullen huffs at the display.

The mage dresses quickly, wrapping his torso in a sleeveless linen shift that ties over his bruised ribs, and slipping into his armor with a practiced twist. A layered silk over robe covers his bare shoulder and drapes all the way down to one knee. Its white brocade shimmers faintly blue where the light catches upon barely-seen patterns of magic woven into the fabric. Rings are pulled from a pocket, and Cullen watches as each ring slips over a finger, catching at the light and glinting gold. He runs a be-ringed hand through his hair and curls the ends of his mustache. 

While he dresses, his daemon slips around Hildi’s attempts to make nice. It’s bigger than Cullen remembers, but in the chaos of the impending attack on Haven he’s hardly had the time to inspect the bird. Brilliantly colored in jewel tones, the peafowl is as regal and proud as its person. Standing halfway up Cullen’s thighs and about eye level with Hildi, its head is crowned with a light plume, but it’s the tail that is most striking. The long, train of feathers is twice again as long as the bird and decorated in a riot of blues and greens that shimmer under the lamp light. 

It takes flight suddenly, and Cullen steps back out of reflex. The peafowl flies with more grace than expected of its size, trailing long feathers far behind it in a flutter of sound. It roosts on Dorian’s covered shoulder, barely able to fit except that the mage is taller and broader than expected and the peafowl just manages to make its perch look artful rather than cramped. Jeweled talons grip at the leather straps over Dorian's shoulder, securing its roost. Its neck stretches nearly a head over Dorian’s odd cut of hair and its tail fans all the way down to Dorian’s heels like a sweep of a cloak at his back. The entire image is artful and polished.

Daemon and mage say not a word to each other, which is more unnerving than Cullen expects. He’s used enough to Templars and their daemons being silent, but in his experience mages are always close and chatty with theirs. Though Dorian’s daemon is close – closer than expected considering the thing’s bulk – they don’t speak. It’s an odd dichotomy against Dorian’s usual continuous fall of fancy words.

Perhaps, another thing that marks the man apart from expectations.

.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cullen and Dorian return to Redcliff (Krem comes along for fun).

Skyhold is a fortress, but it is an old one and there is much to do. Cullen is juggling a sheaf of reports, a headache, and Leliana’s steady stream of things he needs to know about. Their walk around the parapets lets Cullen get a stream of the cold mountain air against his face – a balm for his head he suspects the spymaster to be aware of. Behind them, Hildi and Gus, Leliana’s orange tabby daemon, trail them in silence. While the two are similarly colored, Hildi is massively larger than Leliana’s slim cat. This does not stop the cat from chattering lowly, the lion’s head canted down to listen and keep their conversation to themselves. The spymaster pair is one of few in Skyhold who does not treat Hildi’s silence as strange or unnerving.

Light flickers. In the courtyard below them, Cullen sees the Tevinter mage first. The man’s leather gear is dotted with enough mirrors to reflect a dazzling amount of sunlight, but he has his white robes over his shoulder, which is equally eye-catching against the stone walls of the fortress.

Next to him is Chancellor Roderick, still pale and using Dorian’s arm for support, and the Inquisitor. The Chancellor and Inquisitor wear similar red, knee-length tabards marking their minor roles in the Chantry, though while Roderick looks fully the part of the docile Chantry bureaucrat the Inquisitor is openly wearing a pair of hand axes on her hips and her boots are armored all the way to the thigh. She's ready to head out for a short mission in the Frostbacks, Cullen knows. He knows also that she'll shed the Chantry cloth at Skyhold's gates and walk into the snow looking fully like the rogue she is.

Boudica Trevelyan is a young woman. Cullen is aware that she has siblings, at least one of whom is a Templar. It is, perhaps, why she sided with the Templars during the recent rebellion despite her inclination to befriend any and sundry mage she comes across who doesn’t try to kill her.

She is a collection of contradictions that Cullen is only just beginning to see is part of a long-constructed facade. Her history states that she is the youngest of a Marches noble family, sworn to the Chantry at a young age but she speaks with a Rivaini accent and has the complexion to match. She wears the knee-length red tabard of a cleric sister, but has an earful of little golden rings and a love of necklaces that stack halfway up the column of her neck.

And Cullen has never seen a great cat daemon amongst the Chantry unless they were a Templar. Trevelyan’s jaguar is a massive thing, well larger than Hildi, with bright yellow eyes she shares with her human and a tendency to slink about the edges of a room like a stalking predator. He doesn’t look like he should belong to the petite Trevelyan, dressed in Chantry cloth as she is. Then Cullen will see the glint in her eyes, or one of the reports from her missions will cross his desk and tell how she buried a hand ax into the face of some Venatori and Cullen will believe the jaguar to be all hers.

It’s only since they’ve arrived in Skyhold that some of Trevelyan’s innocent Chantry mask has fallen away. She doesn’t hide her ruthlessness as harshly, or her skill with an ax as jealously. Nor does she hide her distrust for the Chantry Templars as well, a reason for which Cullen has yet to gain.

“Who is it that you watch,” Leliana asks.

“Oh, uh, I was just – the Inquisitor is a puzzle, I suppose.”

“She isn’t when you know her origins.”

Cullen glances at the spymaster, but doesn’t ask. The Inquisitor’s past is her own as much as Cullen wishes he could keep his own past buried in time. As much as Trevelyan confounds him, Cullen doesn’t ask. Leliana gives him a smile for holding his tongue.

“Her mother was a Rivaini seer, did you know?”

Cullen blinks, “I didn’t.”

Leliana offers Cullen a morsel of information that offers more questions than answers. Rivain is a complex country with a mix of Andrastian and native beliefs, noble merchant courts and tribal villages far removed from Chantry influence. A mage seer, though, Cullen thinks. An apostate most likely, or trained in the Circle of Diarsmuid that was annulled just a year ago for that very practice.

“The Chancellor looks much improved,” Leliana shifts the focus, leaves Cullen scrambling over the mysteries surrounding their Inquisitor’s past and dichotomous personality.

“He does.”

Roderick is leaning on Dorian, but not heavily. The Chancellor’s arm is looped through Dorian’s elbow, their shoulders touching as the mage supports the smaller man’s stooped frame. Cullen knows the Chantry man has been healing, though the severity of his wound, his age, and the rough travel through the mountains has made the process slow. Despite the Chancellor’s obvious weariness, he participates in the trio’s conversation with equal measure. Cullen can’t hear them from this distance, but the Inquisitor is grinning and he can hear an echo of Dorian’s laughter against the stones.

“Thanks to our Tevinter.”

“He carried Chancellor Roderick up the mountain out of Haven,” Cullen says. “And without complaint.”

“A rare feat, I hear. The complaints I mean.”

Cullen hums, “so I’m told.”

“The Inquisitor is becoming fond of him.”

“She has taken him out on missions with her these past few weeks,” Cullen says. She has taken Dorian with her on nearly all her missions since their installment at Skyhold. Their friendship blossomed fast and deep and obvious to any who see the two interact. Cullen isn’t sure if some event drew them together or if their personalities simply mesh that well. One wouldn’t think so. The Inquisitor is a Chantry trained cleric and Dorian a pampered Tevinter rake – by his own crowing admission.

Another mystery: most Chantry clerics are not learned in handling a weapon, yet the Inquisitor carries a pair of hand axes she is well familiar with (if her mission reports have any truth at all to them), and carries three daggers under her Chantry cloth. It isn’t many, really. Cullen counts at least seven on Leliana and four on Josephine on any given day.

“She has nearly cleared the reaches of the Storm Coast,” Cullen continues to recite facts Leliana already knows for the sake of conversation, “and she is about to turn to Crestwood. Her preparations are in place, now. I believe she plans to depart within the week.”

“She is consistent in taking a mage along with her on her excursions.”

Cullen hums again and finally turns to the woman next to him. “What are you getting at, Leliana?”

Her smile is faint and fond, “Josephine will be appalled at your lack of subtlety, Commander.”

“I’m a warrior,” Cullen huffs, “not a politician, or spymaster. Speak plain, Leliana.”

She does so with blunt efficiency. “With your history I expected more hesitation and suspicion from you about the few mages we have in our forces.”

Cullen sucks in a breath, darts his eyes towards Dorian in the courtyard where he stands with a pair of Chantry folk, resplendent with his daemon on his shoulder cloaking him in its tail. Cullen actively ignores memories and nightmares from his past.

“It is not as difficult as I thought,” he admits a half-truth. “Though, I still have reservations I fear I’ll never be rid of.”

“I would worry more if you shed them entirely.”

“Mages are – can be dangerous,” Cullen says slowly and sighs. He isn’t sure he has the words to put to his mental shift without sounding paranoid or crazed. He fears the potential danger of mages. He can’t not with what he has seen and experienced, but he has seen good things out of mages, too, a few precious good things like specs of gold amongst a desert.

“Dorian is little like our circle mages,” Leliana says with uncanny insight.

“No,” Cullen glances at her, wary and aware of her line of thought. “He isn’t at all like most of the mages I’ve met. He isn’t at all like Hawke, either, I suppose. They both had their own brand of rebellion.”

“You think Dorian is a rebel?”

“Leliana.”

“He risked his life to warn us at Haven,” the spymaster says, dropping her leading tone again. “He carried another man on his back to save his life. He buries the dead with reverence. He protects the Inquisitor with a ferocity that has endeared him to her. He has willingly sacrificed position and wealth to fight against his countrymen without reservation, in fact with relish.”

“Are you saying he’s trying to get in our good graces? Do you suspect him of some plot?”

“Oh, no,” she slips her hand through his elbow, patting his arm as if quelling a child of restlessness, “I believe his motives to be true enough.”

“Then what is your point?”

“I am merely listing his attributes,” she says and a smirk blossoms on her face, “He is also very handsome.”

Cullen makes a sound in his throat that he’s heard from Cassandra on more than one occasion.

  
II.

While the Inquisitor routes brigands out of the Storm Coast, Cullen accompanies a small team from the Bull’s Chargers to investigate Redcliff Castle. Unwilling to be left behind, Dorian comes along. “I’ve a friend missing still, and I would like a look at that blasted pile of stone one more time.”

So, to Redcliff they go and Cullen gets to witness two run-away Tevinters meet each other for the first time.

“Krem,” the man introduces himself. “Cremesius Aclasi, just Krem, though. Chief’s busy,” this he says with a leer at a tent behind the sprawling collection of the mercenary company surrounding a cooking fire in the lower courtyard. Cullen can hear why the Chief is busy and he blushes, to Dorian's obvious delight. Krem just laughs. “We need another? I’ll bring Stitches.”

Stitches is a scarred Mercenary with a rough voice, too many knives, and a satchel full of potions – “poultices. They’re poultices! I’m no pottinger. I do herbalism and honest healing! Hands and herbs!” – Cullen nods at the man. He is half a head shorter than Cullen but his Molosser dog daemon nearly reaches his chest in height. Her tongue lolls, despite the cold, and she doesn’t even sway when Krem’s hyena leans full into its side, chattering about a good hunt.

Cullen rattles off logistical details about Redcliff as they saddle horses, anything that may aid their investigation and ensure that the castle is safe. If the Venatori emptied out of the castle as Dorian stated weeks ago then they’ve only brigands to worry about, likely. The Inquisition scouts have reported the bulk of the Venatori forces elsewhere. For reasons unknown, they did not return to Redcliff once they marched out of it.

“Brigands?” Dorian concludes, “the south is ever full of such charming personages.”

“You can go back north, Vint,” Krem says not without heat but around a sharp grin

“Oh, but I just adore the south, all to little pieces!”

The mercenary drops his eyes down Dorian’s white robes over his charred staff, and settles on his colorful bird daemon. As usual, it's perched on Dorian’s covered shoulder like some elaborate cloak, jeweled talons clutching at Dorian's leathers. Its tail sweeps almost all the way to the mud under their boots. The bird looks entirely decorative, entirely too fine against the rugged shapes of the two Mercenaries and their canine daemons or Cullen's lion. Dorian smirks as if he knows the punchline to some joke they haven't heard yet.

“You sure you’re up for this, Vint?” Krem asks. “Southern brigands aren’t hobbled slaves trying to escape across the Valerian Plains.”

“Is that concern for the Evil Vint Magister, Cremesius?” Dorian chuckles dark and low and ignores the allusions to slave-hunting, “I’m flattered.”

“You shouldn’t be. We could use a bit of bait for the brigands.”

Dorian dances his fingers down his staff, smiles at Krem like he’s departing with a great secret, “Canas sigote, kaffente calcemas.”

Krem lets out a full-body laugh that bows his back. His daemon laughs with him, her wide grin full of teeth. "Watch your feet, Krem," she says to her human. No one responds to her, though Dorian's eyes flicker down when she speaks. Krem rocks forward and claps Dorian on his empty shoulder, the gesture familiar and friendly despite his earlier needling of the man. The hit is loud in the air and makes the mage sway and blink. “Never heard an Altus throw insults like Soporati before. Kaff! Where did you learn Vulgar Tevene?”

Dorian’s smile is sharp. “Would you prefer I speak in Old High Eastern? The pretenses are a little tricky and I admit even I struggle with the pronunciations of a near-dead language, but I am confident I can manage. Let's see now. Si egote kaffa entus calcemeas.” His accent rolls around the vowels like a purr.

“Hah!” Krem slaps the mage’s arm again, “nah, stick with the Trades.”

“Fine, fine.”

“But eastern? You’re from that way? I thought you came from Minrathous.”

“From the Eastern Imperium?” Dorian clarifies, “yes, I was born in Qarinus.”

Krem squints at him and his voice drops, “close to Seheron.”

“A stone’s throw across the Nocen Sea. On a clear day one could almost see the haze of jungle humidity waft up from that island. When the wind was right, you could smell it.”

Krem turns half to Cullen and waves at Dorian, “Chief mentioned he can cast well enough, but he might actually be useful.”  
Dorian scoffs, “pardon me?”

The mercenary ignores his fellow Tevinter, “most Altus in Tevinter wouldn’t know what to do in a battle to save their staffs, but Qarinus has a reputation for training theirs to actually fight properly.”

“Yes, of course,” Dorian is obviously cross, “there is no sense in letting a Qunari raiding party run off with the results of so many eons of careful breeding, after all. We do know how to defend ourselves.”

Krem eyes the mage again, a full body inspection that runs from his head down to his toes and back up to the bird on Dorian’s shoulder. He points at the peacock’s jeweled feet, “battle talons?”

“Of course.”

Cullen raises an eyebrow, inspects the jewelry on the bird’s feet. He had thought it only decorative, like the daemon’s shape itself and Dorian’s collection of golden rings, but what looks like jeweled metal décor is fiendishly sharp blades and armor. The blades on the metal talons are longer than his fingers and prick at Dorian’s leathers, nearly piercing his magic-enhanced gear.

“Your daemon participates in battles?” Cullen asks. It’s not unusual to see, but a mage’s daemon rarely is involved in such things. Even the Venatori’s daemons held back in the mess of battle at Haven. Dorian’s peafowl looks too ornate to be effective in a skirmish, much like the man himself.

“Daemons under the Qun make no distinction between a man and his soul.”

A shiver crawls up Cullen’s spine from the mage’s words. It isn’t hard to imagine how a Qunari raiding party would handle Tevinter daemons. The Qunari in Kirkwall had collected a swath of complaints for breaking taboos surrounding daemon interactions. They tended to treat human and daemon alike, directly interacting with either half of a pair whether via words or touch. Cullen’s fingers find Hildi’s ear with barely a thought to the action.

“Yeah, that’s true,” Krem nods and shrugs, “Chief’s still does that. You get used to it.”

Cullen doubts that and Dorian’s face imitates his thoughts on the idea of another’s daemon touching him, or some half-stranger reaching out to Hildi.

“Yes,” Dorian says, voice clipped, “I am aware of that barbaric habit of his.”

This makes Krem laugh again.

“Regardless,” Dorian says, and for the first time runs his fingers over the blue breast of his daemon. It pushes into his hand, curls his head over Dorian’s hair to touch his beak to the mage’s forehead. The pair is distant. Their lack of affectionate interaction always leaves Cullen reeling. Circle mages tend to hover over their daemons, whispering and chattering constantly. Cullen has yet to hear more than a whisper of the peacock’s voice.

"Let’s go," Cullen says.

As they ride out of Skyhold, Cullen hears Stitches, “what’d he say? In the vulgar?”

“Low or Vulgar Tevene is so flexible and full of allusions,” Dorian answers instead of Krem, who snorts in response. “It’s delightful. But basically, I said, if I am to be your bitch, then I will shit on your shoes.”

“Basically,” Krem says, still chuckling.

“Quite.” Dorian’s head tilts to a haughty angle that opens his throat and exudes so much self-confidence it’s palpable. “Using Vulgar Tevene for insults or threats is such a pleasant exercise in expressing one's displeasure."

"You don't want to play bait?" Krem grins, "thought you'd appreciate knowing we all thought you to be the prettiest lure for thieves and their dogs."

Dorian inhales sharp through his nose, "they aren't my type."

"I heard rumors about Minrathous brothels."

"All true," Doria crows, "though I've never visited one that keeps dogs on offer. Are you familiar with them?"

"Maker's breath," Cullen hisses as his brain lets go of tactics and catches up to their conversation and he registers what exactly they are talking about. He glances back at the group. Dorian gives him a leer.

"Tevinters," Cullen breathes out, much to the pair's amusement.

Dorian's laugh follows him out of the hold.

  
III.

Redcliff is a stark castle, intimidating and old, but long used. Cullen is well enough familiar with it, having grown up in Honnleath under Redcliff’s province. It’s tall walls and thick gates are intimidating from without and a comfort if locked up within. Extremely difficult to take, a defending force in Redcliff Castle could withstand an invading army for weeks.  
Dorian shudders next to him, his eyes tracking over the battlements like a mouse cornered by a cat.

Then again, Cullen thinks as he watches the mage, Redcliff makes a good jail as much as it makes a good hold against attacking forces. “How did you escape?”

Dorian glances at him, face masked and eyes sharp. He answers after the time comes and goes that Cullen expects an answer, “Gereon made the mistake of letting me skip my morning dose of magebane.”

“A mistake?”

Dorian shrugs one shoulder as he turns away, “or not.”

“You don’t know?”

“He wasn’t exactly in his right mind anymore. I’m unsure if he did so on purpose. I have to believe he did, that he gave me the opportunity to escape.” Dorian pauses in the middle of the courtyard, somber in a way Cullen rarely sees him. He kneels and brushes his fingers against the charred stones. “Else I’m not sure I could ever trust my memory of him.”

Hildi rounds Cullen with a pointed look and curves around Dorian’s back without touching the mage. Dorian either doesn’t notice her or is unconcerned. He stares at his hand against the dusty cobbles. The man’s peacock daemon watches Hildi instead, grey eyes watchful as the lioness sits at Dorian’s back.

Cullen waits him out, keeps one eye on the mage kneeling and one on the mercenaries circling the courtyard and kicking in doors. The castle is quiet without a trace of Venatori presence. Cullen eyes the decaying bodies robed in red near the castle’s keep. There are no living traces of Venatori, at least.

Dorian stands at last and stalks across the courtyard to the keep. The mercenaries meet them at the main door and just inside, where a vestibule opens into a great hall, they are met by a company of rough-hewn brigands.

The skirmish goes smoothly, for all that none of them have fought together before. The Inquisitor has, on more than one occasion, expressed her regard for The Iron Bull and his Chargers during their employ. So, Cullen is not surprised with Krem’s effectiveness. He slots into formation with Cullen, acting as damage dealer with a giant maul to counter Cullen’s defensive use of a shield. Their daemons, Stitches’s great dog included, race into the hunt without hesitation. Stitches himself remains behind, knives in hand as he guards their flanks and the mage.

Dorian’s magic sizzles up Cullen’s spine, heat and power flashing off the mage as he casts. Fire flashes over Cullen’s shoulders in a stuttered rhythm. One barrage bears a man down enough for Cullen to slash through his neck. The resulting lull gives him a chance to breathe and take in the details of the battle. Dorian’s fire shifts beyond the trio of brigands dropping to Krem’s swings to a door opposite. A pair of brigands snarl around the flames, stymied in the narrow opening.

It takes Cullen more than half the battle to grasp that the mage is controlling the tide of the brigand’s attacks.

The realization is so shocking that Cullen whips his head around.

Dorian’s casting is a full body thing. He moves through his spells without hesitation or reservation. His footprint is wide, taking him paces from side to side as fire flares down his staff. His daemon is off his shoulder – no doubt its weight and bulk would be a hinderance to his casting style – and stalks the outer range of Dorian’s circle like a rear guard. It flies up into the air to slice its talons through the throat of a mangy dog daemon that tries to slip past Stitches. A golden shower rises and the bird is left unruffled. Dorian only gives his daemon a glance, unconcerned with its inclusion in the skirmish.

Krem calls out something in Tevene, and Dorian’s staff whips down at Cullen. Fear and betrayal flare hot in Cullen's chest until the presence looming at his back douses the emotions like a bucket of water over fire. Fire flares along the mage’s arms, down his staff and flies at Cullen’s face. Cullen turns with it, the motion ducking his head around the fireball, his sword chasing the flames. Half-blind from the brightness of the fire and unsure of his exact target, Cullen’s sword slices into the shoulder of a hulking man rather than his neck just behind the splash of fire damage. The man’s great bulk bears down on him. Cullen drops under the man and stabs his sword up into his belly.

Something cracks over the man’s head – Krem’s maul, perhaps – and the brigand’s dead weight suddenly drops like a mountain atop Cullen’s shoulders.

“Is that the last one?” Krem asks from some distance away.

Cullen grunts from under the man’s body, rolling it off his shield to thud on the floor. “Check the room past.”

“Right.”

“You don’t need to use yourself as a battering ram, Commander,” Dorian says from right behind him. Cullen twists awkwardly and nearly loses his footing on the slick floor. Dorian steadies him, his hand stronger under Cullen’s elbow than expected – then again, the man has more muscle than any mage Cullen has seen in a circle. Dorian pulls him to his feet with a tsk.

“Honestly,” Dorian continues, “your sword is long enough, one would think you could reach your opponent’s soft spots without luring them on top of you.” The mage leers at him, “unless that was your intent all along, Commander, at which point I recommend using the tactic with more amenable, hmm, opponents.”

“Dorian,” Cullen rubs the back of his gloved hand over his forehead, half to wipe away sweat and hide the blush rising in his cheeks. The man just does not stop.

“Yes, yes. I did promise, didn’t I? No more teasing, but I believe you owe me a staff, Commander.”

“What?”

Dorian holds up his staff – his broken staff. The charred wood is in two ragged pieces, a splintering crack crawls up their remains. Cullen stares at it. “You hit the man with it, didn’t you?”

“Well, normally I carry a battle glaive, not some flimsy bit of southern yew,” Dorian waves the remains of his staff idly, without care. “It was a desperate acquisition when I escaped Redcliff. I hardly had the opportunity to find a proper staff at the time. They were disinclined to arm me, you see.”

Cullen considers that, wonders how much of an escape Dorian had to make at Redcliff. The man arrived in Haven with almost nothing to his name, barely dressed, and staff over-charred with an army at his heels. “I’ll provide a new one for you,” Cullen finally says.

“As I expect. Preferably something with a blade made of proper metal and a good focus,” Dorian eyes the cracked staff with disdain and tosses its pieces to the side. It’s hardly useful cracked in two, and a wooden staff is not easily repaired. He smirks, "then I can really cast some magic."

Cullen thinks the mage casted quite well as it is. “Your fire nearly got me in the face,” Cullen eyes the brute at his feet. The man is nearly twice his size.

“You moved. You’re a Templar, are you not? I trusted you to be familiar with the intricacies and potential that is fighting with a mage at your back.”

“Most circle mages never see battle.”

“Truly?” Dorian looks honestly surprised. “What on earth do they do with themselves? Do you even let them out of your circles?”

“Not often,” Cullen admits.

“And people wonder why they revolted." Dorian waves that away before their conversation can descend into politics. "Mages are excellent in battle, Commander. Just look at the Imperium’s Legions, stacked with battlemages and very effective combatants. Perhaps The Bull could enlighten you on just how effective.” Dorian pauses, winces, “on second thought, don’t. From what I understand he served on Seheron and that is a bloody muddle I would not ask anyone to relive, even for the illustration of the efficacy of mages unleashed in combat.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Dorian eyes him, “have you really not fought with a mage before?”

Cullen shrugs, “none like you.”

“Well, no! I’m rather one of a kind,” but Dorian seems pleased.

“This room is clear,” Krem says, emerging from the door with his hyena on his heels. She grins widely, jaws bloody in a way that is disturbing in its implications. Daemons don’t bleed. “There are,” he pauses, looks back at the cave with an inscrutable expression, “remains.”

Cullen lets out a breath. Hildi rounds Dorian’s legs from whatever shadow she had been stalking, carefully skirting the mage’s armor. She brushes close enough for Dorian to notice her and he watches the lion with eyes a little too wide to be calm. Cullen digs his fingers into her ruff to keep her by his side and offers Dorian an apologetic look. Hildi just watches, blue eyes nearly glowing in the dim light. She’s never been shy, carrying all their dreams and desires. Cullen ignores the way she watches Dorian and his peacock.

“Can they be moved?” Cullen asks.

Krem grimaces and that’s answer enough.

“I can,” Dorian starts, pauses with a twist of his features as if unsure, “I can bury them there. Or if you prefer the traditional Andrastian pyre,” he trails off with a vague wiggle of fingers.

“That may be for the best,” Cullen considers. “The fire, I mean.”

“Quite.” Dorian moves forward.

“Your staff?”

Dorian waves a hand, “I never would have made Enchanter if I couldn’t cast a bit of fire without the aid of a staff, Commander.” The mage hovers in the narrow door for a moment, hands fluttering about him as he peers inside. His voice kicks low, “ah, I see,” is all he says. His rings catch at the light, glint too-bright for the dim light, and fire ripples up his fingers like a torch. He slips into the darkness, face smoothed and without a word.

“Looked like slaves,” Krem says from his side. The man is quiet, staring at the door Dorian disappeared through. “The remnants of some blood ritual, probably. They were cut up pretty well.”

Having seen the man handle the dead after Haven, Cullen trusts Dorian to treat the remains of the slaves with respect. Krem watches the door, expression inscrutable, and offers no comment about Dorian's appointed task. It doesn't take the mage long. He emerges with fire at his back. It casts Dorian in dark relief, a regal figure in leather and white silk framed by bright fire.

“That will do,” Dorian says and it is soft with a reverence Cullen doesn’t expect from the Tevinter.

The team is silent as the room burns. Smoke trails dark out of the door, mixing with the gloom over their heads.

  
IV.

“He’s not here,” Dorian says as he steps out of the keep, joining Cullen on the stairs. Cullen turns in time to catch a complex look of grief and hope on the mage’s face. Over the last few hours in Redcliff’s keep, Cullen has learned about Dorian’s friend Felix and the tragic end the Alexius patriarch saw in the courtyard. There is no trace of the ashes Dorian left there, either brushed away by footsteps or blown by the wind.

“There is no trace?”

“Some affects, robes, old correspondence that tells me nothing at all,” Dorian waves a frustrated hand. “Nothing useful. From the glimmers of conversation with Gereon,” he pauses but continues with a faint shrug, "and Melpromene,I suspect Felix left Redcliff some time ago. Perhaps, before I became a guest here."

The mage's daemon leans in to Dorian's ear. Cullen only hears a whisper of the peacock's voice but whatever he says makes Dorian nod. "It is as likely as anything else," Dorian says.

"Do you have a way to contact your friend?"

"There are a few contacts I can try, yes." Dorian brushes his fingers over Cullen's arm where it rests idly across his sword pommel. "Thank you for allowing me to accompany you here. Felix is a dear friend, and I very much would like to ensure he is alright."

It's the first time Dorian gives Cullen one of those rare real smiles that the Inquisitor receives so often. It softens Dorian's face and makes his eyes shift from sword steel to the color of light on a soft pond.

.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Krem actively tried to take over this chapter and the entirety of this story. Now I have pages and pages of Krem x Dorian interactions. Maybe I'll post some of those later...


End file.
